Guest Post: Lest We Forget: In Search of the Forgotten Voices of World War One

Yet another fascinating post from recent PhD graduate Lauren O’Hagan on her poignant discoveries in the Janet Powney Collection of Children’s Literature.

Thursdays have become my new favourite day of the week. Why? Because I get to spend the day in Special Collections and help catalogue the Janet Powney Collection – the fantastic assortment of Victorian and Edwardian children’s literature. Every week, the Collection brings a new surprise or delight. In recent weeks, I have come across such unique treasures as a copy of What Katy Did Next mysteriously inscribed two years before its actual publication date and a beautiful 1871 edition of Hetty’s Resolve hand-bound and gilded by a devoted husband to his wife. I may have also accidentally uncovered a nineteenth-century insurance scam involving the arson of a pub (but more about that another time!). But something that has remained a bittersweet constant over the past few months has been the fact that, hidden in most of these books, are some of the forgotten voices of World War One.

John’s Adventures by Thomas Miller, London, c. 1897. Prize awarded to young Albert Stopher.

The Swan’s Egg by S. C. Hall, London, c. 1895. Awarded to a very young George Stopher in 1905.

Behind the beautiful pictorial covers of these treasured Sunday school prize books lie the tragic tales of many of the working-class men who marched off to war to fight the Germans just a few years later. Beguiled by the notion of adventure or the ‘Great Game’, as Kipling put it, many would never return. I would like to use the blog space this week to share the story of two incredible brothers. In doing so, I hope to show how book inscriptions may offer a new way to explore and explain the War, keeping alive the stories of soldiers for future generations now that the conflict only exists outside of human memory.

George Stopher and Albert Stopher
When the Stopher brothers, George and Albert, received The Swan’s Egg and John’s Adventure from St John’s Church of England Sunday School for attendance, good conduct and progress in 1905, little did they know that some years later, they would be dressed in military uniforms and sent off to battle in France.

George and Albert came from a working-class family in Saxmundham, Suffolk. Born just one year apart in 1896 and 1897, respectively, the boys grew up at White House Farm Cottages, with their parents, Herbert (a farm labourer) and Lydia, and six other siblings.

When George and Albert left school, they quickly found work as gardeners. However, the job was precarious and poorly paid. As a result, both boys enlisted quickly in the Suffolk Regiment of the army upon the outbreak of World War One in 1914. George served in the 8^th Battalion and Albert in the 11^th Battalion. After completing training in Ripon, Yorkshire and Salisbury Plain, George landed in France in July 1915, while Albert arrived in January 1916 – both ready for action on the Western Front. Shortly after his arrival, George became wounded and spent some weeks recuperating in hospital before returning to action.

Inscription recording the award of The Swan’s Egg to George in 1905.

During their time in France, George and Albert regularly corresponded with their families and sweethearts. There is a wonderful surviving archive of their letters hosted at Suffolk Record Office in Ipswich. The letters vividly describe their experiences of war. In August 1916, George was hospitalised once again for shellshock. A surviving letter to his mother poignantly states that sending him back to the front line would be like “sending a rat to catch a dog.” It is surprising that it got past the censor.

On 9^th April 1917, the Battalions began the Arras offensive, advancing slowly to attack German defences near the city of Arras. The next day, both George and Albert took place in the First Battle of the Scarpe, which involved a series of attacks that pushed the Germans back north and south of the Scarpe river. Tragically, Albert was shot by an enemy and died immediately. He was just 19 years old. His body was never recovered. Today, he is remembered on the Arras Memorial at the Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery.

George continued on in what must have been harrowing circumstances. He successfully took part in the Second Battle of the Scarpe (April 1917), helping to capture part of the Hindenburg position and push the Germans to the Drocourt-Quéant line south of the River Scarpe. However, during the Third Battle of the Scarpe (May 1917), which involved a general offensive by all three armies astride the Scarpe to secure better defensive positions, he was badly wounded. George held out for nine days in a field hospital before succumbing to his wounds and dying on May 19^th 1917 at 21 years old. He was buried in the Warlincourt Halte British Cemetery at Saulty.

Tragically, Herbert and Lydia Stopher had to deal with the loss of two sons, just over one month apart from each other.

Today, George and Albert’s medals are on show at the Suffolk Regiment Museum. Their names are also commemorated on a War Memorial in Saxmundham Parish Church. In recent years, Rachel Duffett, a lecturer at the University of Essex and a member of the Everyday Lives in War Centre, has painstakingly attempted to retell their stories using the letters held at Suffolk Record Office. She plans to write a book on the subject and work with local seamstresses to recreate some of the local landscapes where the Stopher brothers grew up.

Inscription recording the award of John’s Adventures to Albert in 1905.

With its unique range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prize books, I already found the Janet Powney Collection to be exceptional. Now knowing some of the stories that are lingering like shadows between the colourful covers of these volumes, I feel even more appreciation for the Collection. While buildings no longer stand, communities have passed on and grass on the bloody battlefields grows once more, these books keep alive the memories of many of the brave men and women who gave their Today for our Tomorrow. They stand as a testimony of the unsettling victory of material objects over the temporality of the people that once owned them and the places in which they formerly dwelled.

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”

Guest Post: ‘sweet airs, that give delight’

The following guest post is by Jacob MacKenzie, an English Literature MA student who is working on the Project Management module. As part of this module, and working with our magnificent collections here at Special Collections and Archives, Jacob has chosen his main ‘treasures’ from our collections which he deems especially worthy of showcasing in a series of blogs. These have been paired together because of their complementary, and contradictory qualities. Here, Jacob discusses his first set of items and his reasons behind their pairing:

Pair 1 – ‘sweet airs, that give delight’

Shakespeare is a literary figure who finds himself rather centralised within the canon, with good reason too. His plays have been performed, enjoyed, and firmly cemented in the public’s imagination since they were first written. With this in mind, a Shakespeare text seems an ideal way to begin my series of ‘treasures’ found within Special Collections and Archives, but with an interesting twist – the text is not written by Shakespeare. The play in question is a John Dryden and William D’Avenant adaptation of The Tempest, written 50 years after the original.

John Dryden, The tempest, or The enchanted island : A comedy: as it is now acted at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre, (London, 1676), title page. Cardiff Rare Books Collection.

The second item was written a century afterwards, and is a musical score composed by Henry Purcell, designed to accompany the adapted play. Both texts play a critical role in exploring the culture of co-textuality, and in augmenting each other – as well as being archetypal examples of their rich textual histories. Since this project is founded in co-texts, it seems apt for these to open this series.

Henry Purcell, The Music in the Tempest, (London, c. 1760s), title page. Historical Music Collection.

Treasure 1: John Dryden, The tempest, or The enchanted island : A comedy: as it is now acted at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre (1676).

The first item selected is an adapted play by John Dryden (co-author); William D’Avenant (co-author); William Shakespeare (source text author); and Thomas Shadwell (revisions and alterations author). This is a rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by John Dryden and William D’Avenant and this particular version has consistent adaptations to dialogue, whilst keeping the basic bones of the original plot. The most divergent addition is that of a number of siblings to the original character. These include a sister for Miranda called Dorinda who has never seen a man aside from Prospero (much like Miranda), a man called Hippolito who falls in love with Dorinda, a sister for Caliban, and a girlfriend for Ariel called Milcha. This particular copy is bound in full red morocco leather by Riviere & Son with their stamp in gilt on front turn-in, lettered in gilt on spine. It is in exceedingly good condition for a text of its age and still maintains the ripped page bottoms from its production. It also has a price written in pencil in the inside front cover.

This pair could be of particular interest to researchers of Shakespeare texts and the cultural reactions to them, in regards to the comparisons and contrasts between the source text and the adaptations. Whilst a performance would garner more appeal and  give a new cultural life to the texts in the public sphere, as the Dryden adaptation has fallen from the general public periphery. Moreover, with the emphasis of Shakespeare in the Secondary School national curriculum, this pair would be ideal for exploring the impact of Shakespeare in the literary world.

Dryden, The tempest, or The enchanted island, (1676), page detail.

I chose this play as the first ‘treasure’ for two reasons. Firstly, as a Shakespeare play, it represents a vital part of the literary canon. The importance of its relation to the canon comes down to the perception and reception of it, as it remains an item which the public link intrinsically with literature, and a text which still inspires much debate in the academic world. The idea of a university archive presenting a particular Shakespeare text may seem predictable (and with reason, as the canon remains critically acclaimed and worthy of exhibition). However, and this brings me to my second reason; this is not a play authored by Shakespeare himself, but a revised version by John Dryden and William D’Avenant.  The inter-textuality, to be clear, is what I find to be so deeply stimulating about this text. Whilst being an isolated text in its own right, it also has a rich inter-textual history with the original and represents a cultural response to the original play. In addition, the item has revisions and alterations which evokes a sense of a constant and unending co-textuality. It is, in my opinion, an item which represents the very heart of literary revisionism and inter-textuality in a micro-cosmic manner.

‘Treasure’ 2: Henry Purcell, The music in the Tempest (1786).

This ‘treasure’ is a musical score created to accompany Dryden and D’Avenant’s play, The tempest, or The enchanted island : A comedy. The score consists of several pieces from the second act onwards. Two of them are specifically for Ariel’s scenes, suggesting a certain ethereality to the intended sound. The music was written with multiple lines of harmonies and melodies, indicating that several instruments may have been required for its original performances, possibly played in an orchestral style.  This particular score was printed for Messrs. Longman and Broderip, and sold at their Music-Shops, in Cheapside at the Hay-Market, Paper dimensions: 332 x 233 mm. With a pasted label over imprint, partly visible: ‘LEIGH and SOTHEBY’S, Booksellers, in York-Street, / […] following Music-shops, Messrs. BIRCHALL / […] and Mr. BREMNER’S, in the’., Half-bound in calf leather over marbled paper-covered boards; pasted cover label in gilt: ‘THE TEMPEST’., from the BBC Music Library in the Historical Music Collection at Special Collections and Archives, with the stamp of the BBC, as well as the pencil annotations on front pastedown: ‘Mrs. Edw. Charrington’ and flyleaf: ‘12.2.82. P. Wood Ret. Music Librarian’, and the manuscript annotations on flyleaf: ‘J. Nicholls. 1793’ and at head of title page: ‘Mrs. Nicholls 7th June 1786’. It could prove particularly fruitful for researchers into inter-textuality in Shakespeare, music students, with the potential for cross-university or school projects, as well as musical history scholars.

Purcell, The Music in the Tempest, (c. 1760s), composition detail. Historical Music Collection.

This particular ‘treasure’ was selected in conjunction with the first due to the continuing theme of its deeply intertextual nature. As a text, it is written for performance alongside another text –the adapted play The tempest, or The enchanted island: A comedy. When combined the two texts inform, augment, and illuminate each other. It is even more interesting in the esoteric nature of it as the physical composition of it is to include singing parts of Milcha – a character which only exists in the D’Avenant/Dryden adaptation. The addition of lyrics in the score accentuates a deeper textual layer to the texts and their intertextuality. They were written a century apart, but produced to be performed in unison. In this literal pairing, it only seems fitting that what history has split into two separate ages, formats and authors, should be brought back together as was originally intended.

You can listen to a sample of music from  Purcell’s The Music in the Tempest, adapted by Jacob, here:

Buzzing in the Stacks

Yes I am, but on this occasion there was a definite fuzzy-humming-buzzing sound which caught my ear, and then my eye as I noticed this book on the shelf:

Thomas Hill, A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees (London, 1608).

And this got me thinking about the significance of bees and how these tiny yet vital creatures deserve far more prestige.

Ok, here are some quick facts. There are over 250 different types of bee in the UK. Of these, 25 are bumblebees and only 1 is a honeybee. Not sure of your honey from your bumble? Me neither, so I’ll buzz it down for you:

Bumblebees are generally the fat, sorry, fuller and furry type and live in nests with roughly 50-400 other bees. They live in the wild so may well be a familiar sight in your garden or the countryside, and they only make small amounts of a honey-like substance (i.e. nectar) for their own food.

Bumblebee, by Richard Holgersson.

The honeybee on the other hand, is one of a kind and smaller and slightly slimmer in appearance, more like a wasp. Honeybees live in hives of up to 60,000 bees and are looked after by beekeepers, though wild colonies do exist. Honeybees store a lot more nectar because of their larger colonies and longer life cycles. It is essentially their food supply for the colder months. This nectar is mixed with a bee enzyme and is later fanned by the bees, making it more concentrated.  Both bees are crucial to pollination and both are, sadly, in serious decline.

Honeybee, by Joshua Tree National Park.

In ancient and early modern times, their abundance and importance were widely recognised, particularly with regards to the honeybee. Beekeeping, or Apiculture, if you want to get all technical on me, is the maintenance of honeybee colonies, usually in man-made hives. The production of honey for domestic use is well documented in ancient Egypt, while in Greece, beekeeping was seen as a highly valued and sophisticated industry. The lives of bees and beekeeping are covered in great detail by Aristotle, while the Roman writers Virgil, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Varro and Columella wrote about the art of beekeeping.

Hill, Ordering of Bees, (1608), table of contents.

Some of their writings formed the basis of Thomas Hill’s A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees, the first English manual for beekeepers published in 1568 as an appendage to Hill’s larger work on gardening. His aim was to highlight the benefits of ‘their hony and waxe and how profitable they are for the commonwealth, and how necessary for man’s use’, while his contemporary, Alan Fleming, looked to ‘A Swarme of Bees’ and their behaviour as the perfect example of proper spiritual conduct.

Beekeeping was a common occupation throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Amongst the abundance of popular information contained in contemporary almanacs, advice on aspects of beekeeping is regularly offered. Housekeeping manuals such as such as S. M. Mathew’s Y Tŷ a’r Teulu (The House and Family) (Denbigh, 1891) provided practical instructions on ‘the Care of Bees’ and the best ways to retrieve honey. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject however, is Y Gwenynydd – (The Beekeeper) (or the Apiarist if you still want to be technical about it). Published in 1888, this compact little Welsh book was largely the work of an accomplished beekeeper from Dinas Mawddwy, who was encouraged by his co-author to publish a book on bees for the ‘benefit of our fellow countrymen’, since ‘we did not have one in Welsh’.

Huw Puw Jones & Michael D. Jones, Y Gwenynydd (The Beekeeper), (Bala, 1888).

Could this be the first Welsh-language beekeeping manual that we have in our Salisbury Collection? What a buzz! A unique piece of work it definitely is. In Wales, we are told, there is a saying that ‘the bee is such a skilful creature that it can draw honey from a stone’. While the latter is demystified throughout the book which explains the life-cycle of honeybees and the different species, the types of hives used, how to build them and the best methods to extract honey – the bees’ skill is never underestimated.

Image detail of ‘The Rapid Honey Extractor’ from Y Gwenynydd, (1888).

 

 

This may explain why bees were as much an object of ‘superstition’ as admiration.  It was considered lucky if bees made their home in your roof, or if a strange swarm arrived in your garden or tree, but unlucky if a swarm left.  Bees were believed to take an interest in human affairs, hence it was customary to notify bees of a death in the family. The news would be whispered to the hive, and if they were not notified, another death would soon follow. Turning the hive, or tying a black ribbon to it, thus placing it in mourning also had the same effect, and similar customs were observed for happier occasions such as weddings. Writing about these beliefs, the Welsh cleric and antiquarian, Elias Owen, noted that the ‘culture of bees was once more common than it is, and therefore they were much observed’.

Although they may seem strange to us today, such beliefs point to a past awareness of how fundamental bees were to our daily lives and how we should be more attentive to them, more so now that they are under threat. This is why the efforts of organisations such as the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Pollen8 Cymru, and Professor Baillie and his team at Cardiff University (one of the UK’s first bee-friendly campuses), who are encouraging people to plant more wildflowers to help the bee population and conducting research into the antibacterial properties of honey in the treatment of wounds and the fight against antimicrobial resistance, are so important. Again, this is something that was not lost on our early bee backers. Hill notes the extensive medicinal benefits of honey as a preservative and cleanser, which is good ‘to avail against surfeits’, ‘put away drunkeness’ and to ‘expel humours’, not to mention its ‘profitable’ application to ‘filthy ulcers’; open wounds; ringworm; corns; swellings; ‘dropsie bodies’ (oedema); impostumes (abcesses); earache; dimness of sight and all diseases of the lungs to name just a few. With history and science combined, we can do our bit for the bees and get a very sweet return indeed. And so the moral of this blog post?  Well honey, it’s simple. Read a book, plant a flower, and become a lifeline for British bees.

Oh for books sake! Big spiders and Bibliomania

I know what you’re thinking – only my third post and I’m talking book crazy! Well, working in Special Collections it was bound to happen sooner or later, though I’d be lying if I blamed my current state of mind on the awesome collections here; I’ve always been mad about books.

So enthused in fact, that not even the huge spider in our Research Reserve could deter me from one of my rummaging sessions (he was scrunched up dead, but I was still petrified!) which, incidentally,  led to another where the following titles also jumped out at me:

Books on Bibliomania in the Cardiff Rare Books Collection

Bibliomania describes the ‘passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books’, and was first coined by the physician John Ferriar in 1809. In a poem he dedicated to his friend, The Bibliomania: An Epistle to Richard Heber Esq’, Ferriar describes Heber as ‘the hapless man, who feels the book disease’, whose ‘anxious’ eyes scans the catalogues of book auctions to ‘snatch obscurest names from endless night’. Heber was an English book collector and one of the founding members of the Roxburghe Club, an exclusive bibliophilic and publishing society for like-minded book lovers and collectors. (Note: do not confuse bibliomania with bibliophilia which is not as bad as it sounds, merely the great love of books!).  Incidentally, another founding member, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, published Bibliomania: or Book Madness in 1809, a sumptuously illustrated work set as a series of dialogues on the history of book collecting. It’s interesting that the notion of Bibliomania is seen as some kind of folly or affliction. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the budding culture of reading brought about by the growth of print and literacy was often described as some sort of endemic. Reading-fever, or even reading-lust was one aspect of this, characterised by the compulsive reading of one book after another.

Portrait of Dic Aberdaron from Hanes bywyd y diweddar Richard Robert Jones, neu Dic Aberdaron (Caernarfon, 1844)

This brings to mind the famous Welsh linguist Richard Robert Jones, or Dic Aberdaron, reputed to have mastered fourteen languages through his constant consumption of books. His patron, William Roscoe, describes how ‘His clothing consisted of several coarse and ragged vestments, the spaces between which were filled with books, surrounding him in successive layers so that he was literally a walking library… Absorbed in his studies, he had continually a book in his hand’.

So whilst trying to work out if I am bibliomanic or bibliophilic, I started thinking about other eminent book enthusiasts and, either way, I’m in good company! John Dee, the Elizabethan scientist and astrological advisor to Elizabeth I, we know was an avid accumulator of books, amassing one of the largest private libraries during the 16th century. Sadly, most of his collection was dispersed or stolen during his own lifetime, but Special Collections is fortunate to hold his copy of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gen[t]iles . Naturally, Dee was bereft at the loss, and we get a sense of his deep devotion to books from his dreams. In one, which he recorded in his diary, he ‘dremed that I was deade… and … the Lord Thresoror was com to my howse to burn my bokes’. On August the 6th, 1597, Dee relates how:

‘On this night I had the vision … of many bokes in my dreame, and among the rest was one great volume thik in large quarto, new printed, on the first page whereof as a title in great letters was printed ‘Notus in Judaea Deus’. Many other bokes me-thowght I saw new printed, of very strange arguments’.

He too encountered an eight-legged beast, writing on the 2 of September: ‘the spider at ten of the clock at night suddenly on my desk, … a most rare one in bygnes and length of feet’. You know you’re in trouble when you can see their feet! I truly sympathise Dr Dee, on both counts.

And what about our very own Enoch Salisbury? His hunger for book collecting began with a gift, an 1824 Welsh edition of Robinson Crusoe, and developed over the next sixty years into a compilation of over 13,000 works worthy of a national collection, a genuine prospect at that time.

Title page of  Bywyd hynod a gweithredoedd rhyfeddol y dewr a’r gwrol Robinson Crusoe,   owned by E. Salisbury

Just some of the books in the Salisbury Library

 

 

In 1886, financial troubles forced Salisbury to sell his collection which was ingeniously acquired by Cardiff University thanks to the foresight of its Registrar Ivor James. In a letter to James, Salisbury outlines his ‘one hope… that the same public feeling which carried it away to Cardiff, may lead to its perfection… for the use of a National Library’.  When the concept for a National Museum and Library for Wales was being considered, Cardiff was a serious contender, offering both the Salisbury Library and the collected works at Cardiff Public Library to be housed in a joint museum and library at Cathays Park.

Plan of Cathays Park and site for the National Library in Memorial of the Corporation of Cardiff, (Cardiff, 1905)

The Public Library collection was also compiled through several worthy deposits made by keen collectors. David Lewis Wooding (1828 -1891) was one. A shopkeeper and keen book collector, his library contained over 5,000 volumes which he donated. Another collection incorporated was the Tonn library in 1891, which belonged to the Rees family of Llandovery. This consisted of 7,000 printed volumes and 100 manuscripts, and even the Cardiff coal owner John Cory purchased 67 incunabula which he too presented to the Library.

Nevertheless, Cardiff’s vision for a cultural institution was scuppered by another Victorian bibliomaniac, Sir John Williams. He had been buying whole collections for his own private library since the 1870s, and in 1898 struck literary gold when he acquired the Peniarth Manuscripts, which he donated to the proposed library in 1907, on condition that it be built at Aberystwyth. With nuggets like the Black Book of Carmarthen, the White Book of Rhydderch and the Book of Taliesin, Cardiff was inevitably outdone, for the library at least.

As fate would have it, Cardiff University now houses the Cardiff Rare Books alongside Salisbury’s Library, forming a unique collection of national interest which, over the years, has morphed from one compendium to another, each carrying their own unique story. These collections and subsequently, Special Collections, would not exist if it weren’t for Bibliomania. So the moral of this post is, whether you’re bibliomanic, bibliophilic, even arachnophobic, it matters not; there is always an exquisite method in a madness for books, as seen in Daniel Jubb’s Bookcase.